


they're coming to take me away

by bokutoma



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Azure Moon - Freeform, Character Study, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, Feral Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Gen, Introspection, Sad Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, on god bro we gonna get u some happiness, the ghosts :(, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: what is a fallen prince to do when everyone is dead and dying?or, what dimitri does when the lights are out
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	they're coming to take me away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beastprince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastprince/gifts).



> this is requested by ray! love u <33333

The years that Dimitri spends alone start off in a way that leaves him paralyzed with terror. There are a thousand additional deaths that now rest on his shoulders, stones if not ghosts, and there is a familiar voice that has joined his permanent chorus of damnation. The professor has not appeared among them, not yet, but soon, he knows, they too will be one of the hissing, wailing banshees that shadow his every step.

He hides because he can do nothing else, not when he trembles like a newborn in the cold, but he does not forget. He wouldn't even if he could.

If anyone had ever begun to approach an honest understanding of him before everything went to hell (discounting the professor, with their uncanny gaze), it would have been Felix. Sneering Felix, unburdened by ghosts that haunted Dimitri instead, had always seen to the core of him, the part that seethed with vengeance untaken. He never saw the specters or their turmoil, but that was to be expected; they settled on him in a way that blinded him.

Dimitri wishes he'd been that lucky; he'd tried that route recently, and look how well that had turned out for him. Damned socket had been infected for nearly a week after the deed was done.

No, his family still gives and they still take, and what they have entrusted him with is that which he cannot deny them; their peace.

He does not trust the Goddess.

Perhaps that might have come as a surprise, once upon a time. The future leader of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, a filthy heretic. He is not that far gone, of course, but it matters little. She has done little for him; he wonders if She even can.

If She is not powerless, as he believes her to be, then she is uncaring, and he's not certain which option is worse.

That being said, that leaves putting the souls of the damned to rest squarely on Dimitri's shoulders.

There is a tale in the eastern region of Faerghus, lore that is just as important to the tapestry of his faith, shaky though it might be, as any archbishop-sanctioned passage. It speaks of those who die with works unfinished, things of the life-shattering importance that mean so much, they've been granted a near-life of their own.

It is from here that the hauntings of his fallen family stem from.

Glenn, with his life so unlived. Lambert, ambitious king with plans long from finished and a son to raise. Patricia, with her longing gaze to places unreachable. None of them could be granted any measure of relief when there had been so much to do.

Their spirits live in the underworld now, no measure of absolution granted despite how they need it, crave it enough for Dimitri to feel how they hurt. They'll be there forever, he thinks, and the damn Goddess that is supposed to protect and nurture Her children stands idly by and lets them rot in their torment.

Against all odds, he has managed to survive the aftermath of this underwhelmingly named Tragedy of Duscur. He _should_ have died - but no, his specters don't want that.

After all, who else could put to rest their lingering rage to rest but their remaining tether?

So yes, Dimitri begins his time of solitude with a numbing horror that leaves him frozen head to toe. For a while, the dead but not gone leave him be; perhaps this monastery massacre had been a language they could understand. He languishes in his own jail cell with nary a soul to speak with, and it eats at him more effectively than any rat.

Then Dedue dies in his place, and he is free, but at what cost?

Each fallen face haunts him in a different way. Lambert cajoles, ever the doting father, begging his only son to do what's right, to find those who left him to rot in the dirt of a country that was not his own and put an end to them.

"Please, son. No more hesitation. I love you, and if you love me, you must do this. Your father is so tired."

Patricia, always distant, stares him down, disappointment more than evident in every unforgiving line of her body. He'd not been enough for her in life, and in death this had become even more apparent.

"Dimitri, I beg you not to disappoint me any further. I just want to be free of all this."

Glenn, temperamental and with a shorter fuse than Felix could even dream of, snapped and snarled like a vicious beast, face distorted beyond all recognition. His words, once fond if occasionally annoyed, had turned every bit as brittle and vicious as he'd been that day in Duscur, his face twisted in a furious rigor mortis.

"Precious little princeling, always too weak to fight for himself. You fucking disgust me, you rotting pile of filth. While you weep like a wretched child, I _suffer_ , and even I do not whine half so much as you."

But he'd had time to get used to their voices. Dedue, however, is an entirely different story.

He does not even speak.

He's hardly visible, ever-present as he is at the shadowy corners of his vision, but Dimitri can feel the weight of his gaze nonetheless. Every implacable edge, every cold stare, they all gnaw at him more effectively than any soliloquy of those long dead could even hope to anymore.

There is no unnecessary judgment there; such is not the way of Dedue, and that has not warped even postmortem. No, there is only truth in those knowing eyes, and that stings worse than any knife.

No longer can he even hope for the sweet relief of total darkness; Dedue has always been his best impulse control.

When the professor comes to join them, his permanent and worst companions, he knows that any shred of himself that still belongs to Dimitri Alexandre, heir to the Holy Kingdom, friend, and nobleman, will be lost forever.

At this point, he welcomes it.

In the interim, however, in this terrible limbo between a permanent end and a gradual, spiritual one, he claws tooth and nail at all who cross his path, Empire soldiers, bandits, and hired killers alike. There is only enough room for one menace in these halls, after all. The poltergeists that shatter the fragile pottery of his mind will tolerate no others.

He stalks, he creeps, he kills, but he never, never cowers.

So he is no longer paralyzed, no longer unable to fight as those who chain his hands and bind his lungs demand. If he is not hungry for it, that inescapable taste of blood on a bitten tongue that is not his own, then he has learned to be through necessity alone.

There will not be salvation even after his task is done; there is an unimaginable amount of blood on his hands and in his teeth, and if he were in any position to be his own judge, jury, and executioner, he would let the ax fall without a second thought. That's never been the point, though. Dimitri does not dream himself as a hero.

No, he is no man of childhood legend, no storied King of Lions, but he will save the damned if it's the last thing he does in his whole miserable life.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter @kingblaiddyd !!


End file.
